


Come Hell or High Water

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:53:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's time is almost up, and Sam has one final request ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Hell or High Water

“No. Absolutely not.”

“I need this, Dean.” Sam stared up with those puppy eyes of his working at full capacity. “I can’t just—one week. That’s all that I have left and I need something. Something for … for after.”

Dean felt his stomach turn with a pulse of panic at the mention of the deadline hurtling toward him and then pushed his fear aside in favor of salting and burning this Situation. “You’ll have the Impala.”

“Cars wear down,” Sam pointed out, unwavering.

“Not my baby,” Dean protested. “Not unless you don’t treat her right, and if you fuck her up I swear I’ll—”

“ _Please_. Just do this last thing for me and I’ll shut up about it, okay? I won’t—I need it.”

Sam was practically crying he was so desperate, and Dean felt his resistance start to crumble. He ducked his head, looking everywhere but at his brother and the knife that Sam had laid beside himself on the bed.

“Look, I’ll take you to a parlor,” he offered. “I know a guy in Reno. We can be there by morning and then he can—”

“I don’t want a tattoo, Dean.”

“No, you want me to slice you up!” He was going for angry, but his voice came out a little too wild for that. His eyes were probably giving him away anyway. They always did.

Sam stared earnestly up at him. “What I _want_ is for you to do this ritual for me. I want—I _need_ —some kind of … reminder. A keepsake.”

“Damn it, Sam!” Dean exploded. “I’m already leaving you the car—my amulet—my guns. That’s enough.” He tried to borrow one of Dad’s expressions, firm and absolute, but of course Sam didn’t buy it on him any more than he’d ever bought it on Dad.

“No, it’s not! Don’t you get it? Nothing is ever going to be enough.” Sam’s mouth went stubborn. “I need this, man. I need you to do this one last thing for me.”

Dean let his breath out in a short, hard exhale and dragged one hand through his hair. “I don’t think I can,” he admitted.

Sensing victory, Sam leaned forward. “You can. You don’t even have to cut deep. It’ll take, like, five minutes tops.”

Dean bit back on his impending panic attack in favor of pointing out, “I can’t draw for shit.”

“Your devils traps always come out okay,” Sam said, thrusting a sheet of paper at him. “Look, this is along the same lines. And it’s simpler: not as many components.”

Dean squinted at the photocopy without taking it. There was writing around the image of the sigil—part of the text from whatever moldy tome Sam had found it in—but it was in some weird-ass chicken scratch stuff that Dean couldn’t read. For that matter, none of the different symbols that made up the sigil looked at all familiar either.

“What’s it do, anyway?” he asked.

“It’s for protection,” Sam answered immediately, and there went the last of Dean’s resistance.

Maybe he couldn’t stick around himself and keep his kid brother safe, but at least Sam had figured out a way for Dean not to leave him completely unguarded. While nothing was going to make Dean okay with leaving Sammy to fend for himself, this … well, it was something at least.

And like Sam said, the cuts didn’t have to be deep. Dean would go as shallow as he could. He’d make sure that Sam had had worse shaving.

“Fine,” he sighed. “Just don’t expect it to look this good, okay?”

Sam beamed at Dean as he finally took the paper from his hands. Examining the sigil more closely, Dean had to admit that it really didn’t look too complicated. Just a few lines and some swirls and Sam would be that much safer. A little cutting and some bandages and there’d be one less thing for Dean to worry about when the hellhounds finally caught up with him and ripped him to shreds.

 _Don’t think about them now, you dumb fuck._

Dean cleared his throat and announced, “Might as well get this over with.” He shifted the photocopy to his left hand and grabbed the knife with his right. “Roll up your sleeve.”

“Not there,” Sam said. “On my back. Between my shoulder blades.” He pulled off his shirt and tossed it onto the floor. Then, flopping over onto his stomach, he rested his chin on his forearms and waited.

Dean eyed his potential canvas, and then the narrow strip of unoccupied bed on either side of his brother’s body, and complained, “That’s gonna be awkward as hell. Why can’t I just—”

“Placement is half the point,” Sam answered, glancing over his shoulder. “Look, just … straddle my back, okay?”

And _that_ was up there on the list of things Dean didn’t want to hear during his last week on earth. He coughed and shifted his weight. “I think I’ll manage okay from—”

“Look, you mess this up and you’ll just have to do it again. And if you’re having this much trouble with my back, then you really don’t want to know where the alternate location is. Just get over your gay issues or whatever and do it already.”

“I don’t have ‘gay issues’,” Dean grumped, but he climbed onto the bed and gingerly moved so that he was kneeling over his brother’s lower back.

“I’m not gonna break, Dean,” Sam said. Dean rolled his eyes and settled back on his haunches. Sam immediately let out a dramatic groan and gasped, “Dude, you need to lay off the carbs.”

Dean smacked his brother lightly on the back of the head. “Shut up.” Then, tossing the photocopy down in front of Sam, he added, “And hold that up for me.”

“Are you always this pushy in bed?”

“Just keep still,” Dean ordered, adjusting his grip on the knife as it slipped a little. Jesus, he was sweating like a pig. Fucking disgusting was what it was. Worrying, too. What if he slipped in the middle of things? What if he pressed too hard? What if he hurt Sam worse than he meant to—and that had to be one of the most fucked up things he’d ever worried about.

Sam propped the paper up against the headboard with one hand. “You’ve got to repeat ‘ _adelphos haimas, adelphos thumou_ ’ when you’re, um, working.”

Dean hid his surge of nerves behind a scowl. “Dude, you didn’t say there’d be chanting.”

“You’re willing to carve mystical symbols into my back and the _chanting_ is your sticking point?” Sam said incredulously, craning his neck around and trying to get a look at Dean’s face.

“You know what? Forget it. This was a bad idea.” Dean put his left hand on the mattress for balance while he climbed down, only to find Sam’s hand clamped around his wrist, holding him slightly off center and making it impossible for him to move without falling off the bed.

“I’ll shut up, okay? But you need to do this, Dean.” Desperation was in Sam’s voice: in the tension in his wrist as he held Dean still. Dean couldn’t see his brother’s face, but he was pretty sure that Sam’s eyes were wide and trembling on the verge of tears.

Jesus Christ.

A sinking feeling of fatality—of being shoved face first down the rabbit hole whether he wanted it or not—had taken up residence in the pit of Dean’s stomach. He struggled, making a last ditch attempt to buck free by asking, “What if I don’t? What’re you gonna do if I just get up right now and put the knife away?”

Sam was quiet for a few moments during which Dean could feel his breathing go ragged and frantic, and then he said, “Do you really want to leave me unprotected?”

Dean’s chest tightened and that horrible, dragging feeling—that sensation of inexorable destiny—increased. Which was just what Sam had meant to happen, the manipulative asshole. Dean jerked his hand back.

“Fuck you,” he snarled.

He wanted to run from this, from taking a knife to his kid brother’s skin, from the weight of his own death _(only seven days left now)_ that was pressing closer all the time, from the grief that was already pouring off of Sam so thickly that Dean could practically smell it in the room: something stale and dry like dust. If he moved, or if he tossed the knife into the far wall, then this would end. This trapped, claustrophobic feeling would snap and he’d be off the hook. Sam would yell at him, and cry more likely than not, and be just as vulnerable as he had been before.

Dean swallowed the scream of frustration that swelled his throat and rested one hand against the smooth, unmarked skin of his brother’s back.

“You gonna be able to hold still while I do this?”

“If you’re doing it right, then it shouldn’t hurt,” Sam answered. The hope in his voice left a thousand tiny cuts in Dean’s chest, each one stinging and clamoring for attention. “There may be a little blood, but whatever you do, keep going.”

Dean frowned at the knife.

“Dean?” Sam shifted underneath him again, trying to look around. “You have to promise me that you won’t stop.”

“Fine. Jesus.” Dean took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, forcing himself to relax. Forcing the tremors from his hands. He was calm. He was steady. He could do this.

Dean set the edge of the blade against his brother’s skin.

“Don’t forget: ‘ _adelphos haimas, adelphos thumou_ ’.”

“Shut up, Sammy,” Dean grumbled, and then pressed down. Blood welled up immediately, red and shocking, and Dean’s gut clenched.

Sam let out a small gasp and then groaned, “Chant, damn it.”

Dean opened his mouth and let the words come out. He saw the difference almost immediately. The lines of tension in his brother’s back eased, and the flow of blood increased. Dean had been careful to make only a small incision, but the cut was gushing like he’d nicked an artery. Panicked, he drew the knife back.

 _A little blood my ass_ , he thought wildly, and considered dropping the whole thing right there. But he’d promised Sam, he’d _promised_ , and disrupting a ritual wasn’t exactly the best thing to do. There tended to be nasty consequences for everyone involved. Dean only had a week left, so he didn’t matter, but Sam … Sam had his whole life ahead of him.

Shoving his fears to the corner of his mind, Dean focused on the photocopy that his brother was pressing against the headboard. He alternated his gaze between his model and Sam’s back as he followed the lines of the sigil. The lines he cut were paper thin, shallow things, but they bled copiously and drenched both the sheets and Dean himself.

As the red current saturated the mattress and began to patter over the edges of the bed in a steady stream, the knot of tension in Dean’s chest, which formed whenever Sam was being hurt, loosened: Sam would have been dead four times over if the blood flowing out of him was real. On the other hand, Dean had never heard of a protection rite that needed a blood sacrifice like this, and all that liquid was coming from _somewhere_ —Sam’s future? His past? Some poor schmuck a thousand miles away? This had to be some powerful mojo to be screwing around with time and space like that.

It was enough to settle a new, sullen fear into Dean's gut. It was enough to drive him forward regardless of how many second thoughts he was having.

The bigger the ritual, the worse the consequences for disrupting it. Something this big might actually kill Sam if Dean dug in his heels.

Fuck.

Dean brought his free hand down and traced it over his brother’s blood-slick side, trying to ask how he was doing without breaking the chant. When Sam turned his head to the side, he was flushed and smiling.

“I’m fine,” he said, answering the unspoken question. “Feels like being drunk.”

Great, Dean was slicing Sam’s back to shit and the kid was getting off on it. This was exactly why Dean had never gone in for all this mystical crap. It was too freaky-weird for him.

A moment later, he grunted in relief as he finally sealed the symbol shut. Sitting back, he announced, "Okay, I’m done. You can stop bleeding anytime now.”

Sam blinked twice, obviously refocusing himself with difficulty, and then started whispering. Dean leaned in close and the words weren’t English. It sounded like more of the gobbledygook he’d been chanting himself. Looked like there was more to the ritual than Sam had told him about.

Dean wanted to yell at his brother, but the knowledge that fucking this up now would be worse than bad kept his mouth shut. He settled for getting up and slamming the bloodied knife down into the nightstand: no point in trying to be careful with the room now that Sam had turned the bed and rug into a gory marsh. Dean turned back to watch his brother, muscles tight with the need to stop this—to help Sam—and the rug squelched under his feet.

Sam shifted his gaze so that he was meeting Dean’s eyes. He reached out one hand and Dean automatically took it in his own. Immediately, he knew it was the wrong thing to have done because a force like gravity pressed their palms together. Blue-white arcs of electricity snapped across their fingers, bright enough that Dean couldn’t look at it directly.

It should have hurt—Dean had been electrocuted before so he _knew_ —but it only felt cold. Sam’s face spasmed, though, and his eyes narrowed as he fought to concentrate through an agony that showed in the way his skin went white and his jaw clenched. His voice, rough and hoarse, stumbled and then firmed again.

Dean’s heart gave a wild leap and he decided that interrupting this particular ritual _(and if this was a protection rite, Dean was the Easter Bunny)_ might be better than letting Sam drag it through to its conclusion. He tried to pull his hand free and it was like trying to breathe underwater: impossible and _wrong_. Sam’s fingers twitched against his, holding him tighter, like he was worried that the force linking their palms together wasn’t going to be strong enough to keep Dean there.

“Stop!” Dean shouted. “Damn it, Sam, just shut up!”

Sam gave an almost imperceptive shake of his head— _no_ —and then those sparks of electricity were creeping down his arm and across his shoulders. They spread across his skin like water until his whole body was covered in a burning cocoon of light. Sam was shouting the words now because he couldn’t stop the ritual to scream, but God, Dean could _hear_ the scream in his brother’s voice.

If he couldn’t pull away, maybe he could stop this another way: by moving forward. Dean threw himself down across his brother’s body and felt the blue power part around him smoothly, accepting him, pulling him closer. Sam gave his hand a squeeze, the pain in his voice fading to something manageable, and Dean could feel gratitude and relief in the way that his brother’s back muscles stopped trembling under him.

Dean had a split second to realize that this was what Sam had wanted him to do—had _needed_ him to do to complete his part of things—and then a tug went through his entire body, as if someone had grabbed his heart and yanked it forward. It was disorienting, just bordering on painful, and he was still trying to figure out how to breathe again when the blue light filling his vision exploded outward in a blinding flare.

When he could see again, the light was gone. Sam was coughing beneath him, shaking and twisting around to grab at Dean’s shoulders and pull him into an awkward hug. Dean let himself be held, still too shocked by what had just happened to know exactly how he was supposed to react to this.

Sam’s skin was pristine, the quarts of blood that had slicked it gone as though he’d never bled. Dean twisted his head down a little and saw that the sigil he’d carved between his brother’s shoulder blades was healed over into a barely visible scar. He reached up with the hand that had been welded to his brother’s a moment ago and traced over those raised, white lines. Sam shuddered.

“It worked,” he breathed.

And just like that, Dean was pretty sure that the emotion he was looking for was anger.

He pulled back, hands digging into his brother’s shoulders, and snarled, “What worked? Huh, Sammy? Cause that sure as hell wasn’t any protection ritual.”

Sam just looked back at him evenly, a tiny smile playing around his lips. For the first time in a year he looked calm. Looked content.

Dean’s stomach dropped somewhere around the earth’s core. “What did you do?” he whispered.

Sam’s smile widened and Dean realized suddenly that he didn’t just _know_ that Sam was happy: he could _feel_ it. His brother’s joy and relief were coursing through him in disorienting waves. Dean pulled his hands back instantly, hoping that the feelings would disappear without the contact. No such luck.

“What the fuck did you do?” he shouted, jumping up from the bed. Emotions that weren’t his tumbled through him, confusing him. Frightening him in their intensity.

 _Love hope joy relief worry need you Dean need you so much._

“I made a decision,” Sam said, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed. He glanced down at the blood-soaked floor with interest. “Well, that was a little more than I thought.”

Dean lurched forward and grabbed Sam by the shoulders again. Shook him. “ _What did you do?_ ”

Sam’s eyes were calm as they met his. Soft and certain and scary as hell. “I bound my soul to yours,” he answered.

“You _what_?” Dean whispered. Sam’s determination swelled up inside of him: a devotion deep enough to drown in.

“I told you, Dean. I’m not losing you. Not again.”

The panic was all Dean’s, thick and sour in his mouth. “Undo it. Take it back.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can fucking take it back!” Dean dropped his brother and paced away. Felt his hands itching for a gun and wasn’t sure if it was for Sam or himself or the first sorry son of a bitch who walked through the door to find out what all the noise was about. “There has to be a spell, or a ritual, or—or something.”

Sam regarded him steadily from the bed and said, “Now you know how I felt.”

Dean almost choked on the sudden rush of sorrow running into him. Tried to shove it away and then felt it unbuckle his knees and drop him onto the bloodied carpet instead.

“You son of a bitch!” he shouted. There were tears running down his cheeks, blinding him. He thought he could hear the distant baying of a pack of dogs. No way to outrun these hounds: no way to hide the scent of a tainted soul. Hands clamped down on his shoulders. Pulled him against a chest where a heart beat in time with his: a heart that would stop when his did.

“This isn’t a solution, Sam!” he growled, and wasn’t able to keep himself from clutching back at his brother. _Sam Sam Sammy Sam._ “They’re just going to take both of us.”

Sam’s breath huffed out in a laugh and he held Dean tighter. “I know. Why do you think I did it?”

“No,” Dean moaned. Something inside of him shattered, leaving the pieces to grate against one another with every breath he sucked in. “Sammy, _no_.”

“It’s done, Dean. I’m coming.” Sam shifted his grip, running a hand along the side of Dean’s cheek. _BrotherfathermotherfriendDEAN_. “You’re stuck with me.”

“You selfish fuck,” Dean sobbed. He didn’t know what hurt worse: what Sam had just done or the fact that his brother was _happy_ about it.

“Couldn’t lose you,” Sam murmured. _Loveyouloveyoudon’tleave._ “I just … I couldn’t.”

Dean couldn’t find the words. There wasn’t anywhere to hide from this: no way to deflect and duck behind a shield of sarcasm. Sam was all around him—Sam’s heart was beating _inside_ him—and he couldn’t turn away from that light.

“We can do this, Dean,” Sam told him, rubbing one hand against the small of Dean’s back the way that Dad used to when one of them was sick. “If Dad managed to claw his way out of Hell, then we’ll be out in no time, right?”

But he didn’t really believe that, not deep down. Dean could feel the lie mingle with the rest of Sam’s emotions: a tiny dark blot amidst all that light. Sam didn’t think they were ever getting out of there and he didn’t care. He’d thrown everything away for Dean, who was so damaged and broken that he didn’t think he’d notice much of a difference when hellhounds dragged him down.

“Shouldn’t have,” Dean choked. “Not for—God, Sammy, not for _me_.”

“I didn’t do it for you, Dean,” Sam said. “Would you just—just listen, would you? Can you feel me?” He pulled back a little to splay one hand over Dean’s heart. “In here?”

Dean nodded and a muscle in Sam’s jaw twitched.

“I love you, man. If you’re—it’s you and me, okay? And we’re either going to make those sons of bitches choke on us, or we’re going down together. I don’t—I don’t know how to do anything else. I tried for three years and I—God, Dean, the whole time it was like I was missing a limb or something. I’m not going to do that again. I can’t.”

Dean pressed his eyes shut. “I don’t want this for you.”

“I know, but it’s—this is the way it’s happening, okay? Okay, Dean?”

No, it wasn’t okay. Sam thought he would be lost without Dean, and maybe he would have been for a while, but he would have gotten over it. He would have met some hot chick who’d put up with his emo tendencies, gotten married, and had a shitload of kids.

He would have been _safe_.

Sam was still talking— _I love you, we’ll be okay, need you_ —and Dean tuned the words out as he pulled his brother in for another hug, fierce and punishing. Stupid. God, this was such a dumbfuck thing to do. But Dean was going to make it right.

Sam didn’t think they could pull themselves free, but Dean wouldn’t accept that. He couldn’t. Sam burning in Hell for all eternity just wasn’t an option. And if Dean had to fight his own way free in order to bring Sam out with him, then he would.

Come Hell or high water, he’d find a way.


End file.
